


drawing up the contract

by silverxrain



Series: the spider and the elephant [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 03:53:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4044880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverxrain/pseuds/silverxrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha isn't asking to burn out the darkness at her heart, she just wants to understand it</p>
            </blockquote>





	drawing up the contract

She thought she was fucking different. Loki was absolutely right, she does live by a code, a code that makes her better than everyone else, with their mindless killings and bloodthirstiness. For all her ferocity, Natasha is efficient. Minimum casualties. Minimum damage. For a long time she thought she’d be safe, she’d be human, she wouldn’t go the same way as the other daughters of the Red Room because she had Clint, the most natural, free-thinking, down to earth, crass and sarcastic human right by her side, every step of the way.

And then Barton had to go and show her that he was susceptible too. Him, and her, and no one was immune to tampering, to defiling, of their mind, the most ordinary and good of human beings could be elongated into instruments of torture, and when Barnes came along, he just proved it. Even the legend wasn’t safe. Nothing was good, nowhere was light enough for the darkness not to find her.

Natasha should have known better. You can never escape what’s inside of you. And it isn’t just her, she has to remind herself, she will never be the only one in the world with horror at her core. Human beings are full of darkness that can be manipulated by other human beings into whatever kind of monster they wish to create. Any human beings, any at all.

Maybe not Banner.

Natasha sees blood in the heart of everyone. Not him. There’s nothing but shame. Perhaps, Natasha finds herself wondering, it all went into the other guy. Like Jekyll and Hyde, there’s nothing left in Bruce of the monster, it was all shunted to one side, for times of unbearable anger. Natasha doesn’t know whether that’s worse or better than having rage at your fingertips, always there, always perfectly controlled under your skin, waiting to burst out… oh. _Oh_. That’s exactly what it’s like.

Banner does tell them. “I’m always angry.” And he _controls_ it.

Bruce has it under control. Maybe not fine-tuned, hair trigger control that she does, but Bruce has some amount of control. It doesn’t take her long to realize how much worse this fact must make him feel when he _does_ lose control and cause damage, knowing that it might have been in his power to prevent it.

Nobody trusts Bruce Banner. Nobody will ever trust him again. But Natasha can place a wild kind of _faith_ in him. This guy, she tells herself, perching on the sofa armrest next to him and smiling at him, this guy can break my neck. He can obliterate me in an instant. He can destroy this building where it stands, _if he wants_. And I know he will not, even if he wants to. He won’t take me down. It’s stepping into a tornado and trusting you won’t be swept away.

When she explains this to Steve, he looks thoughtful, and says, “You know, that’s kind of how people feel about you.” Natasha was not expecting that, has no answer. He continues. “I’ve seen you in action, Tasha, you’re just as superhuman as the rest of us. I hope we never find out, but you could take me in a fight. Probably even Thor, and you could definitely take Tony.”

“Pepper could probably smother Tony in his sleep,” Natasha says, and Steve chuckles. He looks back at her. “Most people aren’t even a match for you. You’re on par with super humans. There’s a reason we’re all on this team, you know.”

Natasha chews on this. “Because we’re too screwed up and too dangerous for anything else?” she asks Steve.

“Because we don’t want to hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it,” says Steve.

“That’s true,” she says, and Steve looks at her. She wonders hastily if she should have sounded less doubtful. Never mind. Steve knows what she means.

And just like that, it hits her that Steve knows what she means. Steve knows her. All it took was two years, two hundred near-death experiences, and a lot of trust exercises, and Steve knows her. Steve got past the brainwashed assassin who flirts and tortures with equal magnanimity, and Steve somehow found in her a friend.

Okay, so this is something she can do.

Natasha doesn’t know how to be a friend.

She’s not Steve. She can’t appeal to ‘the essential goodness in everyone’. She isn’t the goddamn pinnacle of righteousness and glory (she knows Steve isn’t either, but she’s feeling a little jealous of him and his genuine people skills). Natasha knows how to do two things with no room for error. Fight or fuck.

Fighting Banner is so far from the realm of possible, so it’s obviously the second option.

Once she decides this, she looks at him and thinks that the poor boy maybe needs some of that. He’s part of a team, but he still seems more alone than any of them, he’s only really bonded with Tony, so far, because Tony has this blasé attitude that’s entirely genuine about Bruce’s thing, and that somehow makes him easy for Bruce to be around. So one thing is clear, to get closer to Bruce, one must inevitably bring themselves closer to the Hulk.

Natasha stops, and thinks about what she wants. To know Banner. To know herself. To know if she is capable of goodness. To know – so maybe this is more about her than anything else. This is definitely about her. (So many years of reading people, Natasha can psychoanalyze herself, no problem).

The basics of her endeavors with Banner are this: Natasha wants to tame him, to know if the monster inside herself can be tamed. Natasha wants to listen to him, so she will be listened to in return. Natasha wants to humanize him, to know if it is possible for herself.

Is this what love is? A trade?

If she can save Banner, does that mean she is indeed not beyond saving?

Natasha is under no illusion that Bruce will be able to pull her out of whatever pit she is in, or will be in, or is. She does not believe she can pull him, either. Rather, it’s about whether they can show each other the handholds. Natasha Romanoff knows no one can damn her now but herself, and also that no one can save her, except herself. But she had help in the first, she will fucking have help in the second.


End file.
